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I'd say I sidestepped your point more than I missed it; I was just taking the opportunity to spread Green Party awareness.

However, you bring up a good point. Is there, realistically speaking, another alternative when it comes to base load power?

Here's a breakdown of where our electricity came from in 2012.
Coal, gas, and nuclear account for roughly 86% of our electrical production. While it's entirely possible to phase out the 19% we get from nuclear and replace it with renewables, how likely is that to happen, realistically? Renewables made up 5% of our electrical generation last year (roughly 2/3 wind, 1/3 biomass, negligible solar and geothermal). You're talking about increasing that capacity fivefold. Fivefold!

While I think we all agree that real renewables are "better" than nuclear, in the ideal sense, but pragmatists among us do honestly see it as a contest between nuclear and fossil fuels. We're not trying to disingenuously ignore renewables, and we don't see anything inherently wrong with them. We just don't think it's happening, because, well, it's not happening. It could happen, but it's not. Instead, people are burning coal and gas. So while yes, it's true that we could shut down nuke plants and build up wind farms, that's not what's happening. It might happen in Vermont, and that would be great. However, looking at the breakdown detailed above, combined with the ridiculously low prices of natural gas, I can see how some might see that as a bit of a gamble.

While I admit that Vermont might just be hippie enough to swap nuclear for renewables, I think that generally speaking, when a nuke plant closes in this country, that generating capacity is replaced by a fossil fuel burner.

What happens when the cheap American gas runs out, or demand begins to become large enough to influence the price? The US would then be saddled with hundreds of power stations using a fuel which is suddenly 3-4 times more expensive than it used to be. The consequences for the economy will be disastrous.

Well it's a good thing hydrocarbons won't "suddenly run out"

Don't get me wrong, I think we should be seriously cutting down on the number of dead prehistoric plants that we burn for fuel, and looking at all other alternatives (nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, etc). My point is more that:

1) We have time to make this transition

5) Alarmism doesn't help the cause of getting off of fossil fuels. Absurd statements like "fuel suddenly costing 3-4 times what it used to" just make people disregard the real concerns of incremental inflation due to fuel costs, and climate issues to due burning fossil fuels.

The price of natural gas is incredibly volatile. Saying that the cost could triple or quadruple is not an absurd proposition. This price for this commodity has frequently doubled and halved in the space of a year. Natural gas in the US currently is overabundant- supply and demand doesn't have much effect on the price. That will change at some point. It is harder to conserve industrial natural gas (compared to automotive gasoline) since the costs trickle down to consumers over a significant period of time. Everything will get more expensive but it may not be immediately clear (to consumers) why.

Furthermore, you can't replace hundreds of power stations in a couple years. There isn't the engineering capability or millwright manpower to run all those projects, and the OEMs can't supply that many machines anyway. There are restrictions all along the supply process, from the forging delivery time/throughput to the large lathes to the large (1000ton) cranes which are required to assemble this kind of machine. None of that capability can be built up quickly, and throwing money at that problem won't provide immediate results.

Hm, american electricity prices: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a obviously in $ cents.

A link that compares several countries (in german, but the countries should be easy to read) prices in dollar cents:
http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/13020/umfrage/strompreise-in-ausgewaehlten-laendern/

German electricity prices according to wikipedia however are 25 EURO cent.

Pretty strange, as far as I recall I pay 17 EURO cent per kWh.

So you are right: you pay less per kWh in the USA: However you use between 4 to 10 times the electricity a German household or person does. So bottom line you pay far more than we do.

You know efficiency can be defined arbitrarily. You seem to define it on "cost per kWh" we define it on "consumed kWh".

Maybe we could burn the plastic we cannot recycle in coal-fired power plants. We produce 32 million tons of plastic waste a year, but burn one billion tons of coal. If the coal feed had 3% plastic added to it the entire waste stream would be consumed while producing some electricity, and slightly reducing the CO2-to-energy output ratio.

http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/plastics.htm http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/coal.cfm

but you are talking about output equivalent to one large coal or nuclear power plant here. To be fair, there is only one nuke plant that big in the world, so let's say the output is equivalent to 2 standard French nuke plants

To be more precise in the comparisons, here's some data from the US Energy Information Agency:

In 2011, the "average" nuclear power plant in the United States generated about 12.2 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh). There were 65 nuclear power plants with 104 operating nuclear reactors that generated a total of 790 billion kilowatt-hours."

Which works out to an average power output of 867 MW/reactor, or 1.39 GW/plant. The conventional shorthand (such as when weighing renewables against nuclear) is that one nuke = 1 GW.

In 2013, energy was 4 times cheaper in the United States than in Europe, and 6 times cheaper than in Germany.

Using current EUR/USD conversion rates and cents/KWh

Industry Retail Nov 2012 (including taxes):
* Germany: 15
* US Avg: 6.53

Residential Retail Nov 2012 (including taxes):
* Germany: 35
* US Avg: 11.74

If you wander why the German residential electricity is so high, it is because they pay a massive 20.50 EUR/MWh or 27 cents/KWh in taxes.

Seriously, nowhere have I been able to find the how electricity would be 6 times more expensive in Germany than in the US, even with taxes applied the difference is only 2.5-3 times. Without taxes, it is less than 2 times.

Ref:
http://www.energy.eu/
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a
http://www.eurelectric.org/media/60787/taxes_and_levies_on_electricity_2011_-_final-2012-560-0006-01-e.pdf

The US produces %0.11 of our electricity via solar. just over 2 TWh (source [PDF]). We have how much landmass and we don't even come close to Germany's output. Depressing... I'm curious to know what programs Germany has in place to support adoption of solar and wind energy production. Although it would likely never happen, it would be nice if we could replicate some of that here, in the more weather-stable parts of the country. Even better if we could have some decent mass storage solutions to allow solar to really support the whole grid on a larger scale (as opposed to locally).

I just want to state how awesome you are. Since you've read all of Ayn Rand's books which one would you say is your favorite? Atlas Shrugged is the trendy choice over the Fountainhead but I can't help but to enjoy it more. Did you prefer Adam Smith's "Of Moral Sentiments" or the classic "Wealth of Nations" more? Even though Smith's opus was Wealth of Nations and outlined his general thesis of economics I prefer Of Moral Sentiments because it better juxtaposed the irrationality of the market through behavioral economics. Just because the current Administration is trying to stifle the production of fossil fuels does not mean we have peaked. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=A Dependent on the whims of the government we could surpass peak oil. New technologies have allowed us to incentivize the mining of prior cost prohibitive oil fields. So my argument is if we have reached peak oil its because of our own constraints not because its physically not there. I'm not even going to argue Ayn Rand not liking Adam Smith. That is trollbait.

The truck burning 14.28 gallons of diesel generates about 145 grams of CO2. [1]

The energy losses for the transmission line (considering it comes from coal) generates about 7 tonnes of CO2. [2]

Hopefully my calculations are correct. Obviously a huge difference here.

But after dumping all that CO2 into the atmosphere, we now find ourselves at a gas station with 10K gallons of gasoline and 1000 MWh of energy.

The Tesla S would be able to drive about 2.857.142 miles with that energy. [3]
Driving these miles, it would "release" about 936 metric tonnes of CO2 (at the coal plant).

A BMW 5 Series 520i would be able to drive about 915.294 miles with that gasoline. [4]
Driving these miles, it would release about 91 metric tonnes of CO2 (in the streets).

Conclusion: fuck the coal plants, we need more renewable energy sources!

[1] http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/documents/420f11041.pdf
[2] http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_S#Powertrain
[4] http://www.bmw.com/com/en/newvehicles/5series/sedan/2010/showroom/compare.html?model_1=

Transmission line losses average only 7%

Yeah, it's not like 7% of the electricity produced is lost before it even reaches your home right? :) http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=105&t=3
Then you know when your charge cord heats up that is electricity lost. The fan kicks on to keep the battery cooler while charging (heat is electricity lost, fan is not used for the purpose of travel)

I wouldn't be surprised if the number comes out to be around 10-15% loss just to get it to the battery.

Then you have the conversion rate of the battery which is probably around 50% of the electricity in making the car move. http://evbatterymonitoring.com/WebHelp/Section_3.htm

I think I saw something that had graphene cables able to conduct electricity with a better loss rate.
http://conversations.nokia.com/2013/02/07/hero-material-10-fascinating-facts-about-graphene/

Then with those super capcitors, I bet they get a better conversion rate.
In the end, that number for conversion will get better by leaps and bounds, as there's lots of room for improvement.
I don't think there's that much room for improvement with gasoline cars.

I think we just need more batteries on the road to help drive that innovation.

It's also way more efficient.

See, that's what I thought as well, but it turns out it is simply not true.

Power stations have a heat efficiency of around 40-45%, electric engines are around 90% efficient. Modern gas engine are 35-40% efficient. So, in total the direct efficiencies are quite comparable.

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=107&t=3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency
http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100628191919AAh0mSc

Right. There are two pertinent questions.

(1) How much total pollution does driving a set distance generate, and how easy is it to reduce this pollution?

For gas cars, the pollution comes from burning gas, and it can be reduced by increasing ICE efficiency and by burning renewable sources like ethanol or hydrogen. Both are quite limited since ICE efficiency is limited by heat engine physics and has been optimized quite effectively already for around 100 years, and alternative sources require non-renewable energy and/or a limited resource like agricultural land to produce.

For electric cars, the pollution comes from producing the electricity. In most countries, this is 90% or more from burning fossil fuels. It is often said that this is much more efficient that ICE's, but he difference is quite marginal: modern cars operate at up to 35% or even 40% (diesel) while power stations operate in the low 40% efficiency and the electric engine is around 90% efficient (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency, http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=107&t=3 and http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100628191919AAh0mSc), although gas cars have further losses in gear and transmission systems that electric engines can avoid. However, shifting to less pollution source power is easier as there are almost limitless energy sources (solar, water, wind, waves etc) that do not produce direct pollution and do not compete for e.g. agricultural land. Even nuclear is a viable option based on how you compare carbon and related pollution to nuclear pollution, including risks like spills and meltdowns (damage x probability).

The ease to switch to non-fossil fuels is really the only viable argument for total pollution.

Of course, a real calculation should estimate all indirect inefficiencies such as fuel transport and amortize all non-unit costs such as the pollution cost to build and maintain the car and the infrastructure around it including oil wells, power stations and even the extra road maintenace because of fuel trucks driving on the road. However, this probably won't change the argument that the main gain of electric vehicles is the flexibility to switch power sources.

(2) Where does the pollution go to?

We can weight pollution by location. For global warming this is not so important, although carbon dioxide near a sink (forest, ocean) might be absorbed quicker than far away from a sink, but in general a greenhouse gas is a greenhouse gas. For health considerations however, it makes a huge difference for pollutants like nitrogen oxides and micro particles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_emissions#Main_motor_vehicle_emissions). In a dense city they cause much more trouble than over the ocean or in rural areas, both because of concentration of pollutants and of people.

For this equation, electric wins hands down by shifting the pollution from the population center to the location of the power plant.

tl;dr TFA completely misses the point by focusing on comparing current pollution to current pollution, ignoring the environmental benefits of shifting pollution from cars to power plants, which are both less harmful by being out of the way and by offering a feasible path to clean energy sources.

Most of the US oil imports come from Canada.

More like a third come from Canada, well a little less than that even. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm

A mobile internal combustion engine has to have certain concessions for weight, vibrations, ease of maintenance, and other things that a stationary power plant does not need, and power plants can install expensive equipment and expensive maintenance to reduce emissions that a car cannot have.

See for example: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11 and let's assume that we are generating our energy according to 2012 rates http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_1 so that average CO2 production per kwh is 1.20.

Let's compare the 2013 RAV4 http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=33397 which gets 44 kwh per 100 miles (the worst I could find that has a gas equivalent). Compare that to the RAV4 2WD http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=33425 which gets 26 MPG.

1 mile on the gas-powered RAV4 produces .63 pounds of CO2.
1 mile on the electric RAV4 produces .52 pounds of CO2.

(I used to do the same calculations on coal alone, but it appears that either coal has gotten more polluting or gas powered cars have gotten a lot more efficient since I last checked)

A mobile internal combustion engine has to have certain concessions for weight, vibrations, ease of maintenance, and other things that a stationary power plant does not need, and power plants can install expensive equipment and expensive maintenance to reduce emissions that a car cannot have.

See for example: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11 and let's assume that we are generating our energy according to 2012 rates http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_1 so that average CO2 production per kwh is 1.20.

Let's compare the 2013 RAV4 http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=33397 which gets 44 kwh per 100 miles (the worst I could find that has a gas equivalent). Compare that to the RAV4 2WD http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=33425 which gets 26 MPG.

1 mile on the gas-powered RAV4 produces .63 pounds of CO2.
1 mile on the electric RAV4 produces .52 pounds of CO2.

(I used to do the same calculations on coal alone, but it appears that either coal has gotten more polluting or gas powered cars have gotten a lot more efficient since I last checked)

You're comparing non-dispatchable and dispatchable energy sources; that doesn't make sense. Even in that comparison, wind is 50% more expensive than natural gas.

According to the CBO, wind is 29% more expensive than the CHEAPEST gas, and wind is already cheaper than the CHEAPEST coal. That's with capacity factor 34%. Of course, the CBO is a well-known source of liberal propaganda and lies.

If government wants to speed up the process, it should drop subsidies for all energy sources and reduce regulations.

Or it could just do what Germany did, and use feed-in tariffs. But that would be ideologically wrong for the flat-earth crowd.

You look like an educated person, but you know jack shit.

Invest a trillion dollars in it over the next 10 years ...

Maybe we should find something that actually makes economic sense before we add another trillion to our national debt.

The US consumes about 6.5 billion barrels of oil per year. At current market rates, that's over $500-600 billion / year, or about $10 trillion per decade. Purchasing oil accounts for about one half of the US trade deficit. It seems to me that spending $100 bil/year for a decade, even if it is borrowed money, in order to not spend 10x that amount in perpetuity, is a fine proposition.

Since peaking in 2005, US carbon emissions have dropped a gigaton per year. This was mainly due to switching almost half of coal-powered to electricity to cheaper and cleaner natural gas..

It is also due to the economy grinding to a halt. It will pick back up as we start producing more, and people stop taking their "stay-cations".

Since peaking in 2005, US carbon emissions have dropped a gigaton per year. This was mainly due to switching almost half of coal-powered to electricity to cheaper and cleaner natural gas. This is near the goal [unratified] Kyoto treaty of 5% below 1990 levels. Since this was acheived by market forces rather than government regulation, Obama and environmentalists almost completely ignore this achievement. Obamas new proposal will lower US CO2 output even more.

Isn't Karma a renewable resource?

Oh.. If you replace Nuclear power with (X) whatever X is that's quite a chunk of power to replace. In 2011, according to this Nuclear power in this country produced over 821 billion kWh of power. If you replace that with X, we need to know what that replacement cost should be, right?

How many wind Turbines that kill about 600,000 birds / year including Eagles/Hawks/Owls.
We're not building any more large Hydro projects, and we have drought in most of the country presumably because of global warming.
Large Scale Solar Projects are hit / miss (30 to 40% success range) but they're getting better. So how many square miles of solar panels would we need and where would we put them? I have Solar at my house an 8kW system but it has degradation problems with US built panels. I'm already fighting to get those replaced but if we buy more Photo-Voltaic based Solar, that means we'll pad the pockets of the Chinese, increasing an already voluminous trade deficit.
Coal is an option but we'll never get to 0% CO2 with Coal, are we willing to build more Coal mainline plants to make up for the capacity?
Natural Gas seems to be attractive and the Natural Gas folks think substantially along the lines that most of the new energy in this country over the upcoming decades will by CNG capacity, not Nuclear, not Coal. Natural Gas produces less CO2, but it's not-renewable and it pollutes both on the supply side (fracking etc)
and in the processing. So, there's trade-offs there and costs.

On the Photo-Voltaic side of things, right now current panels are anywhere from 100 to 200 watts per square meter. My panels for example were rated to average 180.. I get a lot of sun where I am but let's just work this out and figure out with COTS technology what it would take.

Figure 150 watts / square meter.
Let's assume it's sunny every day where you put these and you get 6 hours at that production rate (early morning/late afternoon, lets power, sometimes clouds) shorter days/longer days etc. Anyway that's 900 W and with extra time, let's say another 40% for morning/evening etc. 1260 W/day/meter or approximately 1.3 kWh/square meter. That 821 BkWh figure is 24/7/365 but let's assume 60% of that was peak daytime capacity for 1/3 (8 hr/day) and the remaining 40% was for non-peak. I'm just pulling some numbers out here, so you plug in your own. 60% of that 821 BkWh figure comes out to 492.6 BKwh that you'd need during daylight hours. At 1.3 KWh/sq meter/day that's 492,600 square km. or 190,194 square miles. of COTS Photo-Voltaic or an area larger than California. But wait, an area that large is going to have clouds, storms overhead etc. So let's say that it's only on average 70% efficient, that means you'll need another 30% in additional area plus that would include Winter when the days are shorter. Anyway, this could all be put into a spreadsheet but who in California is willing to live in Shade the rest of their lives to supply us with 60% or so of the replacement of our Nuclear Main Line generating capacity? That other 40% of that that generating capacity that can't be by Solar would need to be replaced by Natural Gas, Coal or Wind. Let's say NG is the way you want to go. You'd need 328.4 BkWh in capacity and a typical NG Power Station about 500kWh (Largest in US has about 545 megawatts/day capacity) so 545 MW/day = 545,000 kWh/day

(sorry for the crude scientific notation)
328.4 x 10^9 / 545 X 10^6 = 602 plant operating days. From this. Using Natural Gas, for a kWh takes the burning of .00798 Mcf of gas McF = 1000 cubic feet. So producing 328,400,

Also throw in all the other advantages versus hosting in California, New York, or even Washington State:
Lower taxes with or without the tax incentives

More relaxed regulatory markets (this is HUGE)

Relatively cheap electrical power (although abundant hydro power makes Washington State cheapest in the nation: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a -- all that rain is definitely good for something)

Relatively cheap local labor

According to EIA data, national, annual electricity transmission and distribution losses average about 7% of the electricity that is transmitted in the United States.

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=105&t=3

I would think the US Energy Information Administration knows what they are talking about.

"distribution" doesn't start at the plant and end at the wheels.

That's actually exactly where the electricity is generated and where it is consumed. There is no electricity before that, and none after that. If that does not include the whole of the "distribution", then I don't know what does.
You argue that from the plant to the middle of the road 35% of the energy is lost. But the above source says that the transmission and distribution losses in the grid are 7%. Even if you include additional transformers (which have efficiencies of upwards of 98%) for getting the electricity into the road, you are still far, far away from losses of 35%.
So please, where from exactly do you get these 35% losses?

1 W * 10,000 PCs = 10 KW * capacity factor. For the sake of the argument, let's pick a fairly high value: 25%. This comes to 2.5 KW. Retail costs are about $0.10/KWh right now, so this would come to a savings of $2,190/yr. For a company that has 10,000 PCs, this is nothing. The cost of paying 10,000 employees would be around half a billion dollars. The time it would cost the IT department to switch browsers, train users, and get everybody configured would exceed the cost saved by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude. Only an idiot manager would use this 1 W "cost savings" to require the users to switch to IE. Thus, it is likely going to happen in many, many places.

Actually Japan increased consumption of oil for power generation by over 105k barrels per day post-quake: Japan’s fossil-fueled generation remains high because of continuing nuclear plant outages - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Prior to the quake they consumed ca. 100k barrels per day on average. Like the rest of the OECD they purged most of their burning of petroleum products for power 30 years ago in the wake of the oil price spike that occurred at the end of the 70s, but hung on to its use in limited and ever-diminishing quantities.

The US still burns a small amount of oil in Hawaii for power. "Small" in this instance means "only" around 300k barrels per day, last time I checked. It's a pittance when you consider we consume ca. 18 million barrels per day total.

Where do you find the actual meaningful difference to be?

Batteries are slightly better in real-world vehicles by any real-world metric, and gasoline is tremendously better by all metrics except pollution, where it's tremendously worse. You cannot drive a hydrogen-powered car across the USA without using more fossil fuels than you would use burning straight gasoline, and that's just a fact. You can't change that fact with your insults and innuendos.

But I think you're being disingenuous; your post ignores nearly everything in my own, completely ignores the context leading to it, and pretends issues like cost of compression and/or refrigeration don't matter. I was replying to someone who asked if squirting hydrogen into an SUV's gasoline engine's intake would be less polluting than running the same vehicle on gasoline. My answer was and is correct in context, but yours is just a sales pitch for some magical form of hydrogen that can be stored under infinite compression without cost - since you claim the volume and temperature of vehicle hydrogen storage simply doesn't matter.

As for sources of numbers, I think I used Drexel University and the US Department of Energy. While I don't have the exact pages I used graven in memory, I can supply you with a link to a chart from the US Energy Information Administration that should be suitable for you and handily proves my point. Note that it includes both energy density by weight and by volume - although it does not include the extremely important (for vehicles) difference in storage requirements for the different fuels charted.

Your sneering tone about "appearing green" ignores the genuine increase in efficiency from an electric drive. No doubt you'll bleat about coal powered cars, ignoring the increasing role of cleaner natural gas in USA's electricity generating mix, and that many buyers will install solar PV to reduce their carbon footprint further.

You say that like natural gas is good....

Even so, unless people buying those cars have meters in their garage that tell them when the wind farm is blowing, its likely its base load being supplied by the trusty coal or nuke plant. Currently, In most places natural gas is being used as peak load, or to supplement renewable.

So hypothetically, an electric car buyer _could_ install solar panels but installing sufficient solar capacity to charge their cars is going to cost as much as the vehicle and is supplied at inconvenient times for charging an automobile. Furthermore, if electric cars became the normal within the next 5 years, where do you think all that electricity is going to come from? Right now its probably going to be natural gas, which is cleaner than coal but has a big fat CO2 footprint (and then there is the claim that leaking methane from production is significant) too, especially when transmission/charging/etc losses are computed. So, its quite possible that simply converting to a natural gas vehicle gives you more of an advantage. Look here http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/1605/coefficients.html#tbl2 to see that natural gas is only about 33% better than than petrol for Btu per unit CO2.

Really, if you want a green battery car, the electric mix should be significantly tilted towards nukes. But many of the same people advocating electric cars are out their advocating wind power. Which is a good idea, but no where near scalable in the short term to cover current generation needs much less the energy needs if everyone switched their cars to electric overnight. When I hear "green" people taking about renewables I just think, they are advocating more natural gas and a significant increase in energy costs. And that is why renewable has had a slow uptake. Its not a simple as building windmills and solar plants everywhere and reaping the rewards. If it were then we would have built them 30 years ago. No, for every MW of wind energy someone is buying a MW of small natural gas generators that can be spun up fast to compensate for the fact that the wind cannot be controlled.

So, the green heads are as much at fault for the climate change problems as anyone. Because, when faced with a choice of solutions they tell people to pick either massive energy price increases or a quality of living decline. Its not really any surprise that people just kick the problem down the road, and they will continue too until the green heads wake up and realize that we have the technology to provide truly clean energy at prices that would make buying an electric car pay for itself when compared with petrol. Instead they run around and fear monger about things based on anecdotal evidence and lack of knowledge instead of actually looking at the statistics and science.

So, yes calling the tesla a coal burner, may be stretching a little, but it is not far off. Enjoy the car for what it is, but don't pretend its somehow more green than buying a toyota yaris, ford focus or any of the many other efficient gas automobiles.

Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2010

This backs up exactly what I said. Quoting from the document in your link:

Section 199 of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, referred to as the domestic manufacturing deduction, provides reductions in taxable income for American manufacturers, including domestic oil and gas producers and refiners. The value of the Section 199 deduction in FY 2010 is estimated at $13 billion and approximately 25 percent is energy-related. While domestic oil and natural gas companies utilized this provision to reduce their 2010 tax liability, other industries, including traditional manufacturing sectors and other activities such as engineering and architectural services, sound recordings, and qualified film production, also took advantage of it.

[emphasis mine]

The commentary in conservative media is actually paid for by big carbon. Propaganda works.

And the commentary in liberal media (that is, 100% of the mainstream media) is subsidized by public funding, both directly and as an indirect beneficiary. So, yes, it does.

Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2010

The commentary in conservative media is actually paid for by big carbon. Propaganda works.

Well, you can get your information from conservative media which echoes big-carbon talking points for a price. (Nice business model, eh?) Or you could swing over the government agency that actually tracks the money, as see for yourself.

What did you do?

Gas is cheaper in inflation-adjusted dollars than when I started paying attention to it. Commodity prices are cyclical. Fearing that they will go to infinity because you've only experienced on upswing is just like fearing the oceans will all boil during the first Summer of your life.

When did you start paying attention, 1980? That's the only time in the last 40 years the prices have been similar, and that was caused by decreased supply due to the Iranian revolution, subsequent embargoes and the Iran-Iraq war. We are at similar inflation-adjusted prices now with the whole world producing at maximum capacity. Imagine how high prices would go if we completely removed Iranian and Iraqi production from the market!

And commodity prices are not always cyclical. If production can not keep up with increased demand (as has been the case with oil for over a decade now) prices will continue to rise. There aren't going to be any more dramatic increases in oil production like we saw in the 1980s and 1990s as offshore platforms and Arctic oil came into their own. We're sucking it out of every place on earth. Demand will continue to outpace production until something displaces oil.

Your guess is as good as mine when that will happen, but it certainly isn't going to be any time soon. Even if the entire world decided to switch to some other technology *tomorrow* it would still take decades to get the infrastructure in place.

Transmission losses in the US are only about 7%.

Whoever modded parent insightful can't do math either.

The irony is delicious...

11 Billion barrels is 11,000 Million. 11,000 Million / 19 Million per Month = 579 Months = 48 Years

You somehow translated 19 million barrels per day into 19 million barrels per month. So you are the one off by a factor of 30.

579 months / 30 = ~19 months, right around what the GP said.

And, a quick google seems to confirm these numbers (~19 million barrels per day): http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=33&t=6

Ok, if solar power is useless then how the fuck did I get to brake even with my investment in microgeneration even without accounting for state support

Okay, let's figure this out. According to the EIA, the average USA home uses 940 KWH per month. Dividing that by 30, you've got an average of 31.333 KWH per day of needs. Now, assuming that you get 250 watts on average from each 1 square meter, than you would need 5.222 square meters of solar coverage per house to collect enough power to average out over the year. Since the average home has +80 m^2 of roof space, I'm sure the average person could find 5.222 m^2 of space facing the correct direction. Now, obviously, you'd have to oversize it. Depending on where you live, you'd have to go bigger to cover the higher AC usage. You'd also want to have more capacity to cover possible expansion. So lets assume that you'd need 7 square meters of panels. That would give you a good buffer. Unfortunately, you'll have to buy a !#$( ton of batteries to store all of that power for night time. Sure, you could use the power company as a "battery" of sorts, but if everyone did that, the electric company would go belly up. So lets assume that you have your own batteries. I'd be willing to bet that most people wouldn't want to oversleep their alarm clock because their daughter left a couple lights on over night, and the power ran out. Or maybe you had a slightly hotter day than average, and your AC used up more than it's fair share of electricity. So lets add more panels, and more batteries. Before you know it, you're spending a metric shit ton of money on panels and batteries. Lest we not forget that until a http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/solar-panels-now-make-more-electricity-they-use>few weeks ago, solar panels took more energy to make than they generated.

Now, even if a solar panel would be a good investment for someone who lives in Arizona, I assure you that we don't get nearly as much sun in Michigan. If I put up solar panels, even after I cut down several trees (raising my cooling costs), I still wouldn't get nearly as much sun as necessary to heat my house. I also have an East/West slopped roof. I'm assuming that would be less than ideal for solar generation. I'm sure that there are some people that solar makes sense for, and maybe you're one of them. For the rest of us, it's a stupid idea, and it will take a long time to even out.

Oh, and these numbers used all assume that you're getting the efficiency mentioned in the article. The average CURRENT panel gets 15-20% efficiency, so you're talking about .066 KWH per 1m^2, which means you'd need > 20 m^2 to cover the average American home needs.

It would help if you looked at the facts instead of guessing: http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=830

Gas was about $1.50 for regular ten years ago. See page 176: http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/archive/038403.pdf. Last time it was 98 cents or thereabouts as a national average was in the 80's. I know in suburban Illinois where I lived at the time, the last time it was under $1 was in the late 90's, I believe 1998. You may be right about one specific locality, that it was 98 cents in 2003, but I don't know that I really believe it.

It's not economically sensible to ship regular, lower-grade coal for producing electricity all around the world.

This is factually incorrect. Coal used for power generation is called `steam coal' and the recent growth of US coal exports is due to steam coal.

You may expect all of this to accelerate rapidly. As the story points out, met coal is going to China from the East coast the hard way; via the Atlantic, Cape of Good Hope, etc. Our pollution outsourcing and de-industrialization needs are so great that the Panama Canal is being expanded to accommodate much larger ships. Simultaneously we're waving environmental regs right and left to dredge up East coast bays for those ships.

This will all be up and running in 2015.

Once "Super-Post-Panamax" shipping can haul coal from the East Coast to China via the Pacific we'll see huge growth in coal exports and more de-industrialization. Coal going that way and finished goods coming back.

Can somebody tell me why they can't put a refinery up in Canada, or even in ND where there is lots of oil.

Regulations greatly inhibit the building of new refineries in the US (only a handful have been built in the last thrity years), but are less restrictive on the expanding of existing refineries. So one builds oil pipelines from where the oil is to where the refineries are.

refineries that are going to be shut down by the storms in the gulf which are getting bigger due to climate change

Where's the evidence that this is happening? My view is that claims of "extreme weather" including your assertion above are remarkably flimsy and unscientific even by the standards of the current "climate change" debate.

It's also worth noting that we've had large hurricanes hit refineries before, and it just isn't that bad. Some may be down for a few weeks, but they come back up.

Natural gas furnaces are 25% more efficient than fuel oil furnaces, so natural gas costs 30% more per BTU input than fuel oil.

I have to disagree. I did the math on this years ago when deciding whether to replace my gas furnace with another gas furnace or get an oil furnace. The data point very clearly in the opposite direction of what you are saying.

This may vary geographically, but the most recent data I could find for where I live (upstate New York) is this: Gas costs $11.49 for 1000 cu.ft. as of last November ; #2 home heating oil costs $3.934 per gallon as of the same point in time. Natural gas has an energy density of 950-1150 BTU per cu.ft.; heating oil is 139,600 BTU per gallon. That works out to a price of $9.991-$12.095 for 1,000,000 BTU worth of natural gas, or $28.181 for 1,000,000 worth of heating oil. In sort, because of the lower efficiency of oil heaters (25% is exaggerated, BTW), you get shafted twice for using oil.

The only real difference is with oil, you get to choose who does the shafting.

so natural gas costs 30% more per BTU input than fuel oil.

What planet do you live on?

heating oil $4.058/gallon, 138,700 BTU/gallon = $29.26 per million BTU
natural gas $ 0.55143 per hundred cubic feet (ccf), 102,000 BTU's per ccf = $5.41 per million BTU

The loss is almost negligible (about 6% for the U.S. electrical distribution system.)

http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/index.cfm

4) Producing electricity far away from where it is used is inefficient since transporting electricity is quite inefficient.

If you had to take a guess, how efficient would you say the U.S. power grid is? If you send 100 kilowatt-hours in at the power plant, how much reaches the consumers, hundreds or thousands of miles away?

Would you believe 94%?

The modern power grid is one of the most efficient machines ever invented. You can thank Tesla and Westinghouse for that.

http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/index.cfm

There's not an oil well or refinery within a thousand miles from me.

Somehow I doubt that. Where do you live?

Not that it matters. For the US, water usage is over twenty thousand times greater than oil usage. Oil, not gasoline, which accounts for only a fraction of oil usage. That ratio is probably higher for areas that use less gasoline per capita (which is nearly everywhere outside the US).

Do you think there would be plenty of gasoline if everyone used even a hundred times more, let alone twenty thousand times more? Could you imagine the infrastructure that would be required? Do you honestly think that there are enough sources of fresh water to import from, assuming you had all the infrastructure and all the energy you needed to distribute it?

Do you know what the term "false equivalence" means?
=Smidge=

a little off topic, but the chart on that page sourced this site... A government agency I'd never heard of. But if you like charts about energy released every day, it seems to be the place to go.

Funny has the Dept of Energy price chart http://energy.gov/science-innovation/energy-sources cuts off in 2008 (despite it being labeled as 2009) and shows rising natural gas prices which peaked in 2008 and have fallen dramatically http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_a.htm . Artificially increasing energy prices is the worse form of taxation.

Wow, that was an incredibly long list of FUD distortions. Let's tackle this one at a time, shall we?

1.His reform doesn't involve government taking over healthcare, it fines people who don't buy health care insurance. People still buy from private insurance providers. Having young, healthy people buy insurance is solves the problem ensures that young, healthy people won't freeload off the of system by buying insurance only when they get sick. Having everybody insured also reduces uninsured people freeloading by getting their healthcare in the emergency room, subsidized by other taxpayers.

2. His executive orders are for stricter enforcement of existing gun laws, something well within his power to do.

3. He doesn't want children to be killed by guns, and he doesn't want victims of rape and incest to carry their attackers' babies? That's just fine with me.

4. Taxes are the price of civilization. They ensure I have a military to protect my country, that the roads stay safe, that police and fire departments are there to protect, that snake oil stays out of the pharmacy, that the food I buy is free of melamine, and that I can drink water safely out of any tap in the country. It sure does matter to who they were raised on. Romney paid less taxes on his millions, using the carried interest loophole to count his commissions as dividends, than his janitor or secretary did. The janitor or secretary are far more likely to spend money on daily necessities, than to transfer gains off to the Cayman Islands. Oh, and during the period of our country's greatest economic boom following WW2, the top marginal tax rate was 90%.

5. Take out the big bailouts which passed under the Bush administration but took effect under Obama, and he's the most frugal spender since Eisenhower. Citation: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/05/24/who-is-the-smallest-government-spender-since-eisenhower-would-you-believe-its-barack-obama/

6. The stimulus saved the car industry and brought it back to life. As for temporary jobs, it keeps people working and prevents them from joining the ranks of the "takers". If I had the choice between either losing my house and going out into the streets, or taking a temp job, I'd do the latter. I suppose you'd rather have the unemployed out in the streets (with no health care), because they're all just "takers" anyway.

7.If you don't believe economic theory, feel free to move to Europe where they're basically slashing government spending during a recession, and places like Spain have 20% unemployment among young people joining the workforce.

8. Energy prices grew under the Bush administration but remained stable during the current one. Citation: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_3

9. The number of food stamp recipients grew by 14.7 million under the Bush administration, more than under the Obama. And part of the reason it grew under Obama is that the administration expanded the number of households able to receive the benefit, while decreasing the benefit per household. Now, certain poor working families can continue qualify for food stamps, with ramping down benefits, which makes sense, as those people have an incentive to keep working to increase their personal income, rather than having the perverse incentive to not find a job to avoid losing benefits. As a result, unemployment has been steadily decreasing under the administration. Citation: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/report-15-americans-food-stamps-980690

Its always about money, then energy and then other resources.
Fuel Imports vs Exports
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_wkly_dc_nus-z00_mbblpd_w.htm
fuel comparison - you might find a better chart
http://www.socalgas.com/innovation/natural-gas-vehicles/policy/fuel-comparison.shtml
The horizontal drilling and fracking used for natural gas is also now being used for crude oil and teh US has a great deal.
The import vs export is going to move in the direction of more fuel export than import when teh LNG exports kick in, in 2015.
And the can kicker gets to decide who gets the export licenses.... and he won't do it for free (for no benefit to his political campagin).

US figures given here... The single most abundant generation source is coal. However, if you combine nuclear, hydro, and renewables, coal is 37.6% vs 30.3% for "non-greenhouse" sources in 2012. If you add nat gas which is cleaner and more efficient even though it does create CO2, total generation from "cleaner" sources is 61.3% vs coal's 37.6%. In other words, it isn't such a bad thing to power your cars with electricity.

source

Ok, I'm skeptical too. Let's check it out! I apologise in advance for large numbers.

From this website I've got a figure of just over 4 million sq. kilometers of arable land in the United States. This website gives daily cross-year average sunlight falling on a square meter of ground as about 160 W. That's 640 x 10^12 W-days of power falling on the land, per day. Wikipedia cites that plants have a metabolic conversion efficiency of six per cent. This website cites a biomass-to-energy conversion efficiency of 20 per cent. So, if we assume that only 1 per cent of arable land was actually covered with plant, and then turned into electricity, total daily production would be 77 x10^9 W-days of power. This sounds like a lot; obviously there will be some more production and transport inefficiencies in there.

For comparison, the US consumes 1.39 x10^9 litres of fuel per day. According to Wikipedia, the energy density of petrol is 49.2 x 10^6 J/L, so that's 684 x10^12 J of energy per day... or, expressed in Watt-days (86400 seconds in a day), that's 7.91 x10^9 W-days of energy.

There are a lot of real world factors not being included in these estimates, but the 10-to-1 ratio here indicates to me that the energies involved are of a comparable scale; if we devoted 10 per cent of arable land to agriculture, we could (with highly efficient processes), conceivably put a sizable dent in our energy usage.

If states like California would allow more refining capacity to be built, then the supply end of the market would have more of a 'buffer' to supply problems (if you have a refinery they build these large things called tanks to store petrol in, this boots your supply and you can crank up capacity if you need more). If you don't believe me you can read this: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2004/06/the_great_refinery_shortage.html
There hasn't been one built in California for at least 30+ years because of environmental restrictions. I was talking to a VP of an oil distributing company, he said that 10 years ago they were trying to get additional capacity for their oil refinery, each time they were rejected because of these regulations and today it would be prohibitively expensive to add capacity. This is not just a problem for California either... just look at what has been built in the last 40 years and where http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=29&t=6 . We are all to ready to fill up our vehicles, but when you bite the hand that feeds you, it may have a hard time delivering.